


Honor

by tenlittlebullets



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: F/M, Fem Enjolras, For The Revolution, Gang Rape, Gen, Genderswap, Hurt/Comfort, Id Fic, Interrogation, Loss of Virginity, Misappropriation of patriotic verse, Misogyny, Torture, and 19th century attitudes thereupon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-09
Updated: 2013-04-16
Packaged: 2017-12-07 23:23:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/754303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenlittlebullets/pseuds/tenlittlebullets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are many kinds of honor, and sometimes the choice between them is stark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [Kinkmeme prompt](http://makinghugospin.livejournal.com/11823.html?thread=4521263#t4521263): _Enjolras is secretly a woman; her captors discover her secret and she is gang-raped._ Do heed the tags and warnings--violence, exceedingly graphic rape, and threatened/implied torture. Eventual Enjolras-Combeferre hurt/comfort.

Enjolras awoke to the flickering light of a candle and the _clunk_ of boots coming down the cellar stairs. How long it had been since she dozed off--indeed, how long she'd been held here altogether--she could not say. Three days could have elapsed down here in the dark, or a mere twelve hours.

She tested her bonds. She was tied as securely as ever to the chair. Her scalp itched furiously, which surely meant the blood had dried, which meant she'd been asleep for some time. Or drugged. Had they drugged her? No, her head felt clearer for having slept, and she doubted they would ply her with laudanum just to loosen her tongue. Laudanum would dull the pain, and pain seemed to be their chief tool of persuasion.

A man she didn't recognize was standing in front of her. He was perhaps forty or fifty years of age, tall and thin, with a hawklike nose set in a pinched grey face. Flanking him were the three goons who'd been hard at work on her for the past... however long she'd been there. Another man, nearly invisible, lurked in the shadows near the staircase. "Monsieur Enjolras?" said the thin man with clipped politeness.

Enjolras nodded.

"I am Clamart of the Sûreté. The investigation of a certain carlo-republican conspiracy falls under my purview. Thus I am, ultimately, your host for this round of... questioning. I trust my subordinates have not been lacking in their hospitality?"

Enjolras smiled a sardonic, bloodied smile. "Sadly, sir, their manners leave much room for improvement."

"My deepest apologies," said Clamart without an ounce of regret in his voice. "My superiors grow ever more demanding, and I have been forced to dig ever lower in my search for assistance. These men, alas, speak only one language, and a crude one it is; but I trust that you and I may come to an understanding."

As had become habitual, Enjolras said nothing.

"Monsieur Enjolras, I beg of you to make my job easy for me. The pressure to crack this conspiracy is considerable. As much as it pains me to leave you at the mercy of brutes, my time is limited, and at present I am the only thing standing between you and the full might of the judicial apparatus. I could save you from the chain gang, or even the guillotine. Talk to me, sir."

"I have already told your men all I have to say. My name is Enjolras. I do not deny my republican sympathies. I will tell you no more."

Clamart sighed, shoving his hands into the pockets of his coat and pacing back and forth in front of Enjolras. "I had hoped it would not come to this," he said with distaste. "You," he snapped, with a jerk of his head towards the man in the corner, "fetch the supplies." The shadow stole almost noiselessly up the steps. A shiver of foreboding prickled down Enjolras' spine.

"You are aware, I trust," said Clamart without pausing in his pacing, "of the Sûreté's philosophy that it takes a thief to catch a thief? I was never a _traitor_ , Monsieur Enjolras, but I was a forger. Honest employment has not afforded me the chance to practice my skills in all the meticulous detail they require; I don't doubt they've gone rusty. But the brands used to identify _bagnards_ are not so difficult to recreate."

Enjolras stiffened in horror. The threat was clear. And the prospect of being branded, in itself, was not one to be discounted either for the pain or for the consequences upon the remainder of her life, but what truly occupied her in that instant was a frantic search through her memory. Where were convicts branded? The back of the shoulder? The chest? Either way, her secret would be out, and under the worst possible circumstances. "You're bluffing," she growled.

"That's got you listening, hasn't it?" said Clamart with perfect serenity. He grabbed her under the jaw in a grip of iron, his fingers closing deliberately around the bruises where one of his thugs had punched her, and forced her to look him in the eye. It was an unnecessary gesture; she was glaring at him with the ferocity of a lion backed into a corner. Clamart met her gaze. "Do not think I am a soft man just because I am polite, even educated," he hissed. "If I was ever soft, the bagne of Rochefort stamped it out of me. You, boy, wouldn't last a week there; I doubt you'd last a day in Toulon. Shall I tell you what happens to lads like you in prison? Or will you tell me what I need to know?"

Enjolras spat in his face. "The fabled honesty of the Sûreté at work, I see. You wouldn't dare. Vidocq has too much of a reputation to uphold."

Clamart wiped it off calmly. A streak of red lingered on his cheek. "Vidocq was dragged out of retirement for this case. He'll turn a blind eye to the details. Now. Last chance. Tell me all you know about Deschapelles, the duke Fitz-James, and the so-called Friends of the ABC."

Enjolras' eyes scanned as much of the room as she could. A few barrels, a stack of crates, the chair she was tied to: very little in the way of weapons. The three thugs were advancing on her. Still she said nothing.

"Very well," said Clamart with a sigh. "Get his shirt off."

With a cry, Enjolras lunged forward and drove her head into one man's solar plexus, ignoring the wounds reopening on her scalp. Her legs were bound securely to the chair, but she managed to plant her feet and swing the chair legs out behind her, feeling them connect with soft flesh before she even heard the other assailant's cry of rage. But the third man shoved at the back of the chair and she overbalanced and tipped onto the floor, her knees exploding in pain. They hauled her back upright cursing and struggling, even biting at any hands within reach. Through it all, she heard Clamart's dry laugh. "Does it frighten you so much? Going through what we all did?" he chucked bitterly. "I suppose you think yourself better than us."

A muffled gasp from the man who was yanking Enjolras' shirt open. "No, I don't think that's why, boss," he said shakily. Up close, she could see that he was a spotty sixteen-year-old, though a burly one, and he was blushing. "You'd better come see this."

The others stepped aside to let Clamart see. He looked her up and down, taking in the specially-designed corset she used to bind her chest and the unmistakable swell of bosom beneath it. "Well," he said with piercing irony. "Monsieur Enjolras. I must admit this is a surprise."

So there it was, out in the open at last. Far from feeling the indignity of her position, she almost smiled; she, at least, felt the same as ever, and these men were caught completely flat-footed by the revelation. They whispered to each other, clearly at a loss for what to do. Enjolras drew herself up as much as she could while tied to the chair and fixed Clamart with a look of cool disdain. "Clamart. You were talking, I believe, about a plan to pass me off as an ex-convict if I did not confess. Carry on. Don't let me distract you."

Clamart was reaching under his coat to retrieve something. It glittered faintly in the light of the single candle: a knife. "Oh no, my dear," he said, and slid the tip of the knife into the lacing of her corset. "Plans can change." To the shadow who had just crept back down the stairs, a red-hot iron glowing in one hand, he barked, "Set it aside. I doubt we'll need it now." The iron skittered across the floor, the reversed letters 'TF' standing out orange in the darkness.

"Sir," said one of the men, "permission to be excused from the rest of the assignment? Only I'm not in the business of hitting women, sir."

"Me either," said the pimply youth. Enjolras allowed herself a glimmer of hope.

"Don't underestimate her," came the shadowed man's voice from his dark corner. "She was taking it like a man before. And you don't need fists to teach an uppity bitch a lesson, do you?"

Later, when all the rest of it had faded into a blur, Enjolras would remember that man's voice and shudder.

"My thoughts precisely," Clamart said. He jerked the knife down viciously, cutting through the laces of her corset and scoring a shallow cut down her sternum. "Gather round, boys, we have a more direct approach now." He pulled her clothing open—corset, shirt, and waistcoat at once—and exposed her chest fully, then stepped back as though to put her on display.

The three men circled around to face her, looking much less like flustered schoolboys and much more like a pack of hungry wolves. Enjolras didn't move. The look of icy contempt stayed frozen on her face, but for the first time, shame welled up hot and unfamiliar within her. She tamped it down ruthlessly. Still it threatened to burst forth: no man had looked at her like that, appraisingly, hungrily, since she had first come out in society and danced with boys at the ball. Their gazes, however shy, had been disconcerting even then. And she had been sixteen when she had last worn skirts; since then, for ten years, she had grown accustomed to considering her body in the matter-of-fact way a man would his. A weapon to be honed, a lump of clay whose human limitations frustrated her, a mere vessel for the soul. Her breasts, for almost as long as she'd had them, had been mere inconveniences; now she was vividly, brutally aware that they were objects of voluptuousness for these men.

"Aw, she's blushing," one of them jeered. "Maiden shame? In a girl who walks about in trousers? Don't give me that, sweetheart." He reached out to fondle, tweaking one of her nipples insolently, and Enjolras felt herself flushing in rage as well as shame.

" _Get your hands off me_ ," she cried out without thought or hesitation, and her voice emerged in ringing tones of command. The man stumbled and took a step backward, his hand falling to his side, but one of his fellows gave a jeering laugh and punched him mockingly in the arm before advancing on her.

"Think you're giving the orders here, do you?" he growled, his breath hot on her face. "We'll just see about that. Boss, lend me the knife for a minute?"

Clamart handed it over silently. The man set to work cutting her trousers off, slashing down each inseam and leaving scratches and cuts in his wake. Drops of blood beaded in angry lines down the insides of her thighs and calves. He saved the true object of his work for last, though, and cut through the fabric at the groin with obscenely exaggerated care. "You two," he grunted, "hold her legs farther apart. I want a look at her cunt."

Enjolras expelled a breath as though she'd been punched. In moments, the others had unbound her ankles and shoved her legs as far open as they would go. The scent of her hit the air even before the man pulled her shirttail up and exposed her to the room. She fought the urge to close her eyes against his gaze; it burrowed into her like a living thing. If it had turned her bosom into an object of voluptuousness, then _this_ it turned into abject filth.

She gritted her teeth. She did not fear death; that was what had sustained her in this cellar up until now. She did fear this. To brace herself, she tried to imagine what was coming, but found herself unable to. Her mind seized up and refused to keep hold of anything but her pulse racing in her ears.

She feared this, yes. But she did not fear it enough to give them what they wanted.

Clamart's voice sounded mockingly in her ear. He must have come up behind her. "Is our modern Joan of Arc also a virgin?" 

"Yes," Enjolras spat.

"Do you wish to remain so?"

"I would prefer that, I must admit," she said in a voice thick with venom.

"Give me names. Addresses. Locations to search. If you won't do such a tiny thing to save your honor as a woman, I can't say you won't deserve what's coming to you."

Enjolras twisted her head to face Clamart so she could look him dead in the eye. "If you think I will place my honor as a woman above my honor as a patriot, you have no understanding of either."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical notes on this chapter: Vidocq was indeed roped back into his old position as head of the Sûreté in early 1832 to deal with political opponents to the July Monarchy, including the Deschapelles/Fitz-James conspiracy, a rather bizarre alliance between republicans and ultra-royalists to topple Louis-Philippe. Although there's no reason to believe the Sûreté ever stooped this low or sub-contracted out to people with such questionable methods, Vidocq was forced to retire in disgrace just six months later when it came out that one of his big PR-boosting crime busts might have been 'arranged' and his own agents were complicit in the original theft. Gisquet, head of the regular police, subsequently took a rather dim view of hiring ex-convicts to fight crime, and Vidocq wound up banned from having any role in the agency he himself had created.


	2. Chapter 2

Clamart stepped back, his face inscrutable. "Well boys," he said evenly, "you heard her. Carry on. I do believe she'll enjoy this chance to whore herself for her country."

Those were the last words she remembered clearly, and in her memory they would forever be coupled with turning around to see her assailant unbuttoning his trousers and letting his erection spring free. It was the first she'd seen of a man in such a state. A perfectly-painted portrait of sordidness: that word, _whore_ , lingering in the air to be taken up again in the jeers and vulgar laughter of the men surrounding her; a man's prick, red and glistening, an infinitely baser instrument of torture than any red-hot poker; two dry, rough fingers prodding at the most private parts of her flesh, and a leering voice saying, "She's a virgin all right. You lucky bastard, bet she'll be tight as anything." That was when her mind recoiled into a sort of battle-fever and she had no attention to spare for feeling soiled or dirty, but Clamart's words had lodged like a barb under her skin, whether she realized it at the time or not. _Whoring herself for her country._

Her hands were untied. They threw her forward over a barrel, perhaps intending to crown their depravity with cowardice and do the deed from behind. But her blood was singing in her ears, she was teetering on the knife-edge between panic and combat-readiness, and try as they might to hold her down, they could not prevent her from horse-kicking any man unwise enough to stand behind her, nor from using the leverage of the barrel to her advantage until all four of them tumbled to the floor. After that it was a brawl. Three men against one half-naked girl hampered by the tatters of her clothing, but she had the ferocity of desperation on her side, and for several minutes it seemed as though they would be unable to hold her down long enough to accomplish their aim. Then something came down on her skull with a sickening _crack_ and she faltered, dazed. From far away she heard Clamart's voice thanking the phantom who was now retreating back towards the stairs, the iron in his hand. "...farce had gone on long enough."

Well, she thought dully as they slammed her down on her back, knocking the breath out of her. She'd just have to endure. That was simple enough. She stared at the ceiling while they stretched her out spread-eagle on the floor, sitting on her legs to keep her from kicking. She didn't want to see which of them would go first. That would be too personal, to be able to say _this man and this man alone is the one who deflowered me_ , when in truth it didn't matter. It could just as well be any of them. She closed her eyes.

And then—pain. Stabbing, ripping, aching pain. She almost laughed at the purity of it: this was simply another form of torture, this was as intimate as feeling a saber pierce her flesh on the barricades of July. The laugh bubbled up in her throat, threatening to emerge as a scream, and she clamped her mouth shut to cut it off. What right did these men have to hear it? What right did they have to watch her face and devour her reactions at this of all moments? They were swine who would rape a woman for refusing to betray her comrades; of all the people in the world, they had the least right to pry into the contents of her mind while she—while she—while she was being—

It wasn't stopping. For one terrifying, vertiginous second, she slipped out of detached thought and inhabited her body fully; she heard, with all the vividness of reality, the rhythmic slap of flesh on flesh; felt the hands squeezing and pinching her; smelled the foul breath in her face; risked having her entire being consumed by the throbbing agony between her legs. Worse, in a flash she saw herself as they saw her: naked body, legs spread, blood smeared on her thighs, a picture of debauchery ready to be used. _No._ She would hold on. She would hold on to something. Her friends. Her country. Her honor. She would not betray them. She would not break.

_Un Français doit vivre pour elle; pour elle un Français doit mourir._

The words came to her unbidden, and she seized them like a drowning sailor clutching the gunwale of a lifeboat. The Republic. A Frenchman must live for her; for her a Frenchman must die. Was she not closer to being a man, a Frenchman, in this moment than the animals who thought they could conquer her by pawing at her? Let them martyr her body as they pleased. The core of her would remain untouched for as long as she refused to compromise herself.

Her lips moved soundlessly as though in prayer. _La victoire en chantant nous ouvre la barrière; la Liberté guide nos pas._ The old familiar rhythm of the _Chant du départ_ , the marching-song she'd learned at her father's knee before he marched east never to return. It rocked her and supported her like a cradle, steady, martial, its beat superimposing itself upon the unfamiliar and sickening rhythm playing out on her flesh. _Et du nord au midi, la trompette guerrière a sonné l'heure des combats._

Outside, laughter, a pause, the creature on top of her pulling away to leave her exposed with a sticky warmth trickling down her thighs. Within, she leaned into the words until they drowned out everything else. _Tremblez, ennemis de la France, rois ivre de sang et d'orgueil! Le Peuple souverain s'avance; tyrans, descendez au cercueil--_

A blow to the face, open-handed: a slap. Her eyes flew open just long enough to catch a glimpse of a man wiping blood off his parts with a grimy handkerchief, "keeping this as a souvenir of her maidenhead," more laughter, and she closed them again. _La République nous appelle; sachons vaincre ou sachons périr_ \--

Another took his place between her legs. A ragged gasp escaped her as he forced himself inside; he was bigger, too big, surely nothing that size could fit inside her, surely he would tear her apart. Good. Then it would be over, and they would not have won. _Un Français doit vivre pour elle; pour elle un Français doit mourir--_

He was rougher, too, shoving himself in at each thrust until he could go no further, sending a different kind of pain shooting through her, like a blow at the wrong angle to the back of the elbow. She bit her lip until it bled to keep from crying out. The words. Hold tight to the words.

_De Bara, de Viala le sort nous fait envie: ils sont morts, mais ils ont vaincu._

"Proud bitch, look at her, might as well be fucking a corpse."

_Le lâche accablé d'ans n'a point connu la vie; qui meurt pour le peuple a vécu._

"See if you can make her squeal." Furious pounding into what felt by now like a gaping wound, hands on her chest clutching hard enough to bruise. "Too late!" And then she was empty, raw, and something warm and wet was splattering on her stomach.

_Vous êtes vaillants, nous le sommes--_

"Back to the earthly realm, please, mademoiselle Enjolras."

_Guidez-nous contre les tyrans--_

A ferocious slap. "Look at me." This voice was different from the others. Cold. Sharp. Precise. She opened her eyes.

Clamart.

He knelt fully clothed between her legs, examining his men's handiwork with a dispassionate eye. The sight of him would have given brave men chills, but Enjolras was not a man. She blinked blood out of her eyes and raised her head to stare him down, paying no attention to the dizziness and nausea that struck her when she moved. He met her gaze, calmly, iron striking iron.

Her lip curled—in rage or contempt, she could not have said which. "Clamart," she rasped when she could make her voice work again. "Why continue this disgrace? I won't talk. Throw me to the authorities—or kill me, if you fear what I'd tell them."

Clamart smiled, matching her contempt with condescension. He drew his fingers along the gashes down her thighs, gentle as a lover, but dispassionate and calculating. She continued to stare impassively down at him, though it made her skin crawl. "Mademoiselle," he said, "perhaps you are mistaken enough to think this is still an interrogation. No doubt you are proud of yourself for resisting. Let me set you straight, then: this is no longer an interrogation. This is a lesson."

"Foolish of you to indulge in such things," she remarked, "if your investigation presses so urgently."

"On the contrary," he said. He pulled the knife out once more and pressed the tip of the blade to her pubic bone. A drop of blood welled up. "You are obstinate, unwomanly, and bent on playing a man's role in this idealistic farce of yours. Extracting information from you would be more trouble than it's worth. I think it would be far more effective to send you back to your friends as an example—if they'll have you after tonight."

He flipped the knife around, holding it by the blade, and smiled. She realized in a flash what he was about to do a second before he did it, and just had time to set her jaw and keep from crying out as he drove the hilt inside her. "I'd like you to think for a moment," he said, grinding the weapon cruelly around so that its every ridge and irregularity caught on the wounds his men had already inflicted, "about what words you'd like me to carve into your thighs when I'm done here. Perhaps you may find it difficult to come up with something we can both agree on, but I encourage you to try. Because the alternative is simply for me to repeat what I'm doing now, with the blade instead of the hilt." He stabbed viciously upwards, seeming not even to notice the blood seeping from his palm where the knife cut into it. Enjolras thrashed and struggled before she could stop herself, but there were still two men sitting on her ankles to hold them down and a third pinning her arms above her head. She forced herself to hold still, twitching with the effort of it, and looked down at Clamart with undisguised hatred.

"Kill me, then, if you want to," she gasped. "Do it quickly or carve me up, just get on with it." She spat in his face, taking refuge in defiance against the thought of the fate to which she had just consigned herself. Her hatred of him focused her like a lens, too strong for her to withdraw into herself and cling to the beat of verse, too strong at that moment for her to care about the pain he was inflicting on her—but she had no illusions about the latter. Best make the honorable choice now, and irrevocably, before the horror truly began and her tongue became no more than the mouthpiece of her agony.

"In good time." He twisted the knife, literally, inside her, and though it was only the hilt she threw her head back and only just kept from crying out. Was this how it would end, then? In indignity and obscenity, with no higher thought in her head than to hate these brutes for their brutality? _Vous êtes vaillants, nous le sommes_ , she mouthed through cracked and bloodied lips, groping for her earlier place of refuge, _guidez-nous contre les tyrans. Les républicains sont des hommes; les esclaves sont des enfants._ Tears of pain leaked from her eyes, but still she made no sound.

"Ha, look, she's crying like a little girl now."

"What's the matter, not enough of a woman to handle getting fucked like one?"

Republicans are men, she repeated voicelessly, the words sticking and repeating in her head. The lackeys of tyrants are but children.

"Hey boss," said the man pinning down her arms, "you're not going to end this before little Paul gets a turn, are you?"

Clamart paused. It was several excruciating seconds before he answered, "You're right. By all means, go ahead, while she's still good for it," and withdrew. More tears squeezed their way out of her eyes, this time tears of selfish relief at her temporary reprieve, and she blinked them away angrily.

The third of Clamart's henchman now stared down at her from between her legs. His gaze darted towards the stairs, then back up and down her battered body. His round, pimply face went rather green at the sight.

Enjolras simply stared at him, too weary to resist. He stared back at her, wide-eyed and wary as a wild animal, his hands frozen on the fastenings of his trousers. She shrugged. She had already resigned herself to a slow and hideously creative death; what did it matter if one more of them wanted to debase himself first?

She raised her eyes to the ceiling and waited. The touch never came.

A small eternity elapsed, or maybe it was only half a minute. Vaguely irritated, she raised her head once more to glower at him and snap, "Get on with it if you're going to do it." He was still fumbling with his prick, which looked too limp to be of much use to him, and his face was red with either exertion or embarrassment. At her words, his head snapped up with almost a guilty start. He looked very young, very--

Frightened. He looked frightened.

One of his fellows nudged him and muttered, "What's the matter, stage fright?" Muffled snickering. He redoubled his efforts, to very little avail.

She sighed. Whoever this boy was, he was a brute. He'd hit her, kicked her, burned her, trampled her underfoot, held her down and laughed along with the others as she was violated. He couldn't be more than sixteen. He looked like he wanted to sink right through the floor and hide.

Damn everything.

It was worth a shot, which meant that she couldn't live with herself if she didn't try. Not that she'd have much time to live with herself, but integrity was the only thing she had left and the only thing that could sustain her through to the gory end. She wasn't going to sell it for as cheap a thing as hate. "Paul," she said hoarsely. Something ugly twisted in her breast, but she forced herself onwards. "Paul, isn't it? Have you ever done something like this before? Had a woman against her will?"

His hand fell down to his side and he gaped at her. Then he rallied, and snarled with sullen defiance, "First time for everything, isn't there? You should know that."

"Don't talk to her, kid, she's just trying to put off what's coming to her."

"Paul," she repeated. "Is your mother alive?"

"Goddammit, Paul, don't let her bait you."

"Ought to shove a cock in her mouth if she won't shut up."

"I'd bite it off," she said, with the casual assurance of someone who does not much care what the reprisal would be. She continued doggedly, "Does your mother know how you make your honest living, Paul? Would you be able to sit down to dinner with her and tell her what you did at work toda--"

She wasn't surprised to be shut up by a punch to the jaw. She hadn't really been expecting it to come from Paul, though. Or for him to keep punching her, in the ribs, the stomach, the chest, shouting, "You fucking _whore_ , you stuck-up bitch, don't you dare talk to me about my mother, what the fuck do you know about my mother and what she'd think, you think she could hate me any more than she already does? The fuck would she know about an honest living anyway, her idea of an honest living is getting her number and moving from the street-corner to the brothel, thinks she's too good for me, filthy slut--"

Well, that was a result.

She lay there and let him hit her until the other two pulled him off. Finally free of the hands holding her down, she tried to curl up on her side, but fell back, gasping, as white-hot agony shot through her ribs. She was too dazed for escape to even occur to her. From far away, over Paul's curses, she heard one of the others saying, "Come on, Paul, calm down, just get a grip on yourself so you can take your turn."

And then Paul, voice cracking and then dropping with fury, "I don't want to fuck her, I want to knock all her goddamn teeth out and break her smug face until she wouldn't fetch five sous for a back-alley fuck--"

"Easy, kid, easy, you want to take her down a peg, a good dicking's the best way to do it. What's the fun hitting her, anyway? You can hit a man any time you like, it's not every day you get to teach some high-minded bitch what her holes are for. C'mon. I think she'd forget if we weren't here to remind her."

"Get off me, Jeannot. I'm not fucking her."

"What's the matter, cold feet?"

"I'm not fucking her!"

Enjolras pushed herself up to her elbows, stifling a groan. Her head was pounding so hard that blackness was encroaching on the edges of her vision, but she could see Paul shove the other—Jeannot?--angrily away from him. The two men stood there glaring at each other, both waiting for the other to make a move, neither willing to back down.

She had no idea how long the stand-off would last, or what the outcome would be. But as it turned out, she didn't have to find out.

The silent fifth participant, the shadow from the corner by the staircase, must have slipped out at some point, for now he rushed back down into the cellar bearing a lantern and a mask. "Out!" he barked. "Everybody out! Somebody's ratted you out to Gisquet's men. That damned bloodhound of an inspector is on your trail, and he'll be here within five minutes."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical notes on this chapter:
> 
> If you're curious about the [Chant du départ](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chant_du_d%C3%A9part) and don't want to sort through all the Napoleon fanboying, creepy Front National videos, and reposts of the same operatic public-domain version on YouTube, here are a few of the better ones: [Mireille Mathieu](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgcSuNaOiD0) (click away from the '80s-ness and the dodgy translation and just enjoy the vocals), [all-male rendition in uniform](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FfCG3_9_wg) (from a '70s biopic about the Imperial Guard, I think), [slightly cheesy version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GoGcSxl0xo) that includes the Bara and Viala verse.


	3. Chapter 3

Enjolras was yanked unceremoniously to her feet as the scene descended into chaos. Her ears were ringing, her legs threatened to buckle under her, and she wasn't entirely sure she wouldn't black out as the blood rushed away from her head. Through the rising dark haze in her eyes, she saw Clamart holding her up by her shirt.

"Listen closely, girl, because I'm telling you what you're going to do," he said. "You're going to run. You're going to run away with your tail between your legs, and you're not going to breathe a word of this to another living soul, because we can compromise you just as easily as you can compromise us. The police are just as interested in you and your little band as we are. And police or no police, if word of this gets out, the whole world will know that the republicans consort with brazen fallen tarts bent on toppling the natural order of everything. Understood?"

She closed her eyes, willing the dizziness to subside. Clamart shook her. "Can you even hear me, girl? Are you going to faint?"

"I heard you," she growled through her teeth. She planted her feet under her. Steadier. Good.

"Do we understand each other, then, 'Monsieur Enjolras?'"

She opened her eyes. Her vision had cleared. "Go to hell," she said, and punched Clamart squarely in the face.

She'd started running before she even had time to feel the satisfaction as his nose broke under her fist. It hurt to run. It hurt more than she ever would've guessed. She stumbled, Clamart's reedy scream echoing in her ears, and forced herself to keep running, bowlegged, her jaw set in grim determination. A ray of moonlight—probably faint, but dazzling in the dark—streamed into the cellar where the others had flung open a loading door, and she knocked them heedlessly aside as she scrambled out from her dungeon into the street.

Clamart staggered over to them, clutching his face with hands already red with blood. "Follow her," he ordered the first man he saw. "Tell me where she goes."

Paul sprang to his feet and bolted after Enjolras.

Clamart watched him go, eyes narrowed. He looked at his remaining men—now two, since the masked man seemed to have vanished into thin air. He nodded to one of them. "Follow him," he rasped. "At a decent distance. But make sure he does as he's told."

They dispersed into the night.

-

Enjolras didn't know how much further she could go.

She noted this dispassionately, some part of her still set apart from the night's proceedings, but even that slight cushion of unreality was beginning to thin as her pulse stopped racing and a seemingly unlimited number of aches and pains started making themselves known one by one. Apart from those, her body was weak with hunger and with thirst, she knew she'd taken too many blows to the head, and she resolutely was not thinking about her other injuries. She didn't have the luxury of pausing to be horrified by them. The bare facts were that she was half-naked, injured, and at the wrong end of the Rue Mouffetard in the middle of the night, and her feet were barely obeying her command to keep putting one in front of the other.

At least she still had her boots. Her trousers were so many useless rags hanging from her waist, her waistcoat had been lost at some point in the ordeal, her corset was cut at the laces and her breasts bounced freely with each step, but at least she could walk as quickly as her legs could carry her through the mire and refuse on the streets of the Faubourg Saint-Marcel, and the long tails of her shirt afforded her some pathetic minimum of modesty. The first thing she'd done when she'd slowed from a run to a walk had been to fasten the remaining buttons of her shirt, but even covered, her unbound chest would make her sex obvious to any passers-by. Not that she'd seen any. Except a shadow that stole along behind her, glimpsed only out of the corner of her eye.

She'd have to take care of that, too.

Arrived at the far end of the Manufacture des Gobelins, she spied a recess in its shadowed façade and ducked into it, leaning heavily against the wall. They'd been keeping her in the cellar of a sordid-looking tavern in the Rue Croulebarbe, on the gloomy and forbidding outskirts of Paris where the thinning-out of the city into the country only made the landscape more lonely and the pastoral vegetation of the Field of the Lark served only to muffle the cries of any wanderer foolish enough to be caught in an ambush at night. It would be a long trek indeed past the Val-de-Grâce and up into the Latin Quarter. Once there, she might be able to lose her shadowy pursuer in the tangle of streets around the Rue des Postes and the Passage des Patriarches, but it would require speed and stealth, and her capacity for both was flagging by the minute. If she could only make it out of Saint-Marcel and into the city proper, past the Rue de Lourcine... and why did that name ring a bell?

Suddenly she saw him. It was the youth, Paul, and he was bad at this. He was looking around to see where she'd gone, and being remarkably obvious about it, and yet he still hadn't noticed her leaning on the wall in the dark. The moonlight glistened off the barrel of a pistol in his hand. Best make her move now, then, while they were in close quarters. And while she still had the strength.

She waited until he had his back to her, then struck. An ugly, inelegant blow, but effective. One hand in his hair to hold him as her knee drove into the small of his back, one hand grabbing the gun by the barrel and twisting until he had to let go or have his wrist broken. Even that limited raising of her leg caused her fresh agony, but before he had time to do more than gasp he was on his knees in the mud with his own pistol held to his head.

"Give me one good reason not to kill you right here," she said, the effort of holding herself ready for a fight—or an execution—making her voice come out even harsher than it already would have.

Paul looked up at her, eyes wide with terror. "I... I don't have one. Shoot me," he said shakily.

Curiosity stayed her hand, or maybe it was pity. "You didn't do as the others did, back there. You refused. Why?"

He just stared at her, trembling.

"You were happy to hit me, but drew the line at rape. Why?"

His lips babbled soundlessly for several seconds before any words emerged. "My... my mother."

"Hates you, as I think you mentioned."

"Yes." He hung his head. "Because she was... she always said my father forced her."

The _click_ as she cocked the gun was loud in the silence of the night.

"And you watched," she said with cold fury. "You helped them. You laughed. It didn't matter to you, until your turn came and you found yourself a coward."

Paul was trembling like a leaf now, waiting for the shot. When it didn't come, the words burst forth in a flood. "I never believed her," he cried. "I knew she didn't want me, two mouths to feed instead of one, being responsible for someone besides herself on this godforsaken earth, but she's always been a whore as long as I can remember, it's never been her place to refuse a man. So somebody roughed her up a bit right before she got herself knocked up, so what, hazard of the job. Happened to her every few months when I was growing up, or more when she found herself some bastard brute of a lover. And then I was in for it too, and she never cared if I got beat up. So why should I care if some son of a bitch gave her a few bruises and had her when she didn't feel like it? But then—"

"But then?" She pressed the muzzle to his forehead, right between his eyes.

He swallowed thickly. "I saw. And I started thinking. Because she had a dozen men a week, how was she to know which one got her with child? Unless—unless, back then, she wasn't what she is now."

"Ah," said Enjolras, her hand not wavering on the gun. "You realized that no woman is born fallen, and that when she falls, there is inevitably a man responsible. How perceptive of you."

"Well, not just that, I started doing sums. Because they said, in court, that I was fifteen when they booked me for breaking and entering, and then it was either the Sûreté or Toulon, and that was just over a year ago. And Maman's barely thirty."

Enjolras' face went white as the implication sank in. "And this is your reason why I shouldn't shoot you here and now?"

"No," said Paul in quiet anguish, "it's why I couldn't go through with it. That, and nobody deserves—what happened to you back there. Christ. Shoot me. It'll be good riddance."

Enjolras paused, her finger on the trigger.

"Shoot me. What else am I going to do? Go back and answer to Clamart?"

The shot rang out. Fragments of bone scattered through the air with a sickening _crunch_ , and a fine red mist sprayed over them both.

Them both?

Enjolras staggered to her knees. Paul, now at eye level, was looking at her like a man not entirely convinced he's not dead. He was unmarked. Which meant...

She looked down at the red stain spreading across her chest.

Footsteps. There were footsteps in the street. She looked up, swaying. One of the men from the cellar. Running towards them. He had a gun. He must be the one who'd shot her.

That meant the pistol still had a shot in it. And she was still clutching it in one numb hand. A fresh glut of blood spilled over her shirt when she raised her arm, but there was one last thing she could do and she would be damned if she didn't.

She pulled the trigger and the man fell, a dark stain blossoming on his chest. She'd shot him through the heart.

Enjolras allowed herself one sigh of satisfaction. The gun fell from her slack fingers and clattered on the paving stones.

When the man had given one final wail and breathed his last, she looked back down at the blood on her shirt, perplexed. Was she dying? She'd been shot in the chest. There were splinters of bone embedded in her side and the underside of her right arm. Shouldn't it hurt to breathe? She was too giddy to feel anything but a burning that spread slowly through her bosom. From far away she realized someone was shaking her arm, sending tongues of fire licking through her flesh at each jolt.

Paul stood above her, pale and clammy with sweat. Wordlessly he pressed a bullet into her right hand and closed her fingers around it.

"How?" she just managed to say. Her voice was tinny in her ears.

"It passed right through. Ploughed a furrow in the mud. I... I think it might be a flesh wound," he said, swallowing thickly. "Excuse me." He turned around and vomited copiously into the gutter.

Enjolras curled her fingers around the bullet that had passed through her. A flesh wound? She looked back down, more attentively this time, trying to trace the bullet's trajectory in reverse. A long strip of shirt torn away on the left side, just below the nipple, and an ugly but shallow furrow carved into the flesh beneath: a graze. A grisly exit wound on the inside of her right breast, bleeding freely. Where had it entered, then? What bone had shattered like that?

She raised her right arm, though it stoked the burning sensation into an inferno. Something jagged dug into her ribs under her arm. One of the whalebone stays of her corset had snapped messily in half, and there, just next to it amid the splinters and the wreckage, was a neat round bullet hole, directly over the swell of her breast.

A flesh wound indeed. One that only a woman could sustain.

Paul turned back around, wiping his face. "What now?" he said shakily.

Carefully at first, then more confidently as she assured herself she wasn't damaging anything vital, Enjolras reached down and took the pistol in her left hand. She stared at it and thought, _I will live. I was shot in the chest and I will live._ Out loud she said, half to herself, "I only had one shot. It was better used on him than on you."

Paul did not ask what she would have done if she hadn't had to choose.

"Get out of here," she said flatly. "Get out of my sight. Find some more honorable profession. Breaking and entering would be a step up."

"I'm under orders to report where you go."

"Will you follow them?"

He shifted his weight uneasily from foot to foot. "What excuse could I give if I didn't? Clamart mistrusts me already. He'd ruin me if he thought I'd betrayed him."

She laughed harshly. "He'd ruin _you_?"

Paul had the decency to look ashamed. He twisted his hands awkwardly in front of him for a long moment, biting his lip, indecisive. "Look," he said, "I'm sorry. For all of it. Here." He extended a hand to help her up.  
The gaze she fixed on him was terrible in its silence.

She pointedly let him keep his hand stretched out in vain before him as, very slowly, very painfully, she climbed to her feet on her own. At last she stood straight-backed in front of him, half-naked, bruised, bleeding, dizzy with pain and with shock, clutching the gun she had shot in one hand and the bullet that had shot her in the other, and let the terrible silence stretch out until he was squirming and flinching under the inadequacy of his own apology. Then she took pity on him.

"Down on your knees," she said. "Hold still. I'll give you what you deserve. An excuse to bring back to your masters, if you survive it."

Paul nodded and knelt in the mud, head bowed. He was trembling like a leaf, though he did manage to hold himself in place. With the last of her waning strength, Enjolras raised her left arm and brought the butt of the pistol down on his head--once, twice, thrice, and then he buckled and fell insensible to the ground.

She staggered back against the wall of Les Gobelins, feverish with the pain washing over her from her wound. She needed medical attention for it, and soon. Where could she find it, alone in this forsaken quarter of Paris in the middle of the night, with the strength to go less than a quarter mile before she collapsed? A doctor? A hospital? She dimly recalled that the workhouse of Lourcine had once been a hospital. No. Irrelevant. Her thoughts were slipping. But that name had come to her once before when she'd been pondering a place to go. Why? The workhouse. Had it been turned into a cholera hospital? There was talk of making it into a home for cholera orphans. Who had told her that? Orphans, children. Unbelievable burnout rate at the Necker children's hospital during the crisis. And Lourcine, attended by--overworked physicians. Exhausted interns pulled from hospitals. Lodging nearby. 25, Rue de la Reine Blanche.

Combeferre.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical notes on this chapter:
> 
> The Rue Mouffetard mention in conjunction with the Faubourg Saint-Marcel is not a mistake; it used to extend all the way down to the Place d'Italie along what's now the Avenue des Gobelins.
> 
> There is actually a tavern in the Rue Croulebarbe that's been there in some form or another since the early 19th century and was allegedly frequented by Hugo. They make delicious cassoulet and probably don't deserve to be featured in a story like this one.
> 
> As far as I know, the Hôpital de Lourcine (now Hôpital Broca; the street has been similarly renamed) was never a cholera hospital, but it was a home for cholera orphans starting in 1832. It has a long and checkered history that mostly consists of intermittent use as a venereal disease clinic.
> 
> (Historical notes have now been added to the previous chapters too. If you're interested in the Chant du Départ, the Deschapelles conspiracy, or the Sûreté's questionable-but-not- _this_ -questionable taste in agents, it might be worth a look.)


End file.
